The Porsche Cayman is sexy
enough for the street, but it’s also
the cheapest dual-purpose
Porsche you can get your hands
on. If you’re budget-conscious
and the car will primarily see
the street instead of the track,
I’d suggest any first-generation
Cayman S or even a base car.
People who aren’t horsepower
freaks can do fine with a first-gen
car—known as a 987.1 and built from 2006 to ’08.

If you’re going on track in
a first-gen car, you need the
upgraded air-oil separatorfrom a 911.
Money is best spent on a redesigned
oil pan and baffling
system. This type of oil-specific
work typically costs $2500 to
$5000 depending on parts and vendors–just to increase oil delivery and mitigate aeration and starvation.

If you don’t do that stuff on
the earliest cars, you’ll show
up on our doorstep with perhaps
a spun rod bearing or a
main bearing failure. It’s almost
inevitable that the failure is
catastrophic, and nine times
out of 10 it destroys the engine
entirely. Early cars can be had for
$25,000 at the dealership while
the DFI cars are $40,000 to
$50,000, but the reliability difference
is worth the extra money.

On the revised DFI-equipped,
second-gen cars, the oiling
system was redone so that oil
is delivered with input from the
lateral g and engine load sensors. As a novice DE or autocross Cayman owner, you’re just looking at oil changes. At the club racing level, especially in hot climates, you’re going to want to increase engine cooling with the addition of a third radiator.

In the $70K-ish market for
track cars equipped with cages
and seats and stuff, the Cayman
faces the BMW M3, the Camaro
and even the Corvette. When
we all go to Palm Beach International
Raceway, the Cayman
does lap after lap while everything
else is in the pits coughing
and overheating. Our race car
just has stock parts on it. You
can spend cheaply on consumables.
It’s kind of the Miata of
the Porsche line in terms of reliability
and how little you have to
do to it.

Brake pads and steel braided lines are
a good initial upgrade path.
The cars’
most basic necessity is front
camber–as much as humanly
possible. When you get to the
point where you can’t get any
more camber out of the stock
suspension, a two-piece control
arm lets you get more camber
out of the car. Our RSS Tarmac
Series LCA ($1050) is one of our
most popular sellers.

For power upgrades, start
with an ECU flash and a larger
throttle body, then look to the
exhaust and intake. For about $10,000 including parts and
labor, the Cayman has the potential
to make 370 horsepower.
There’s not much more you can
do beyond that other than an
engine swap.

We found a way to put the
newer DFI technology on an
older car so you can make it
more reliable. For $30K to
$40K, we can transform a firstgen
car with a blown motor
into a swapped 3.8-liter with all
kinds of upgrades making over
400 horsepower.

For a mild sport suspension,
start with coil-overs, anti-roll
bars, dampers, control arms and
toe links. It’s safe to assume
you’ll spend $5000 on coil-overs
and another $5000 on monoball
control arms, toe links, anti-roll
bar bushings and upgraded bars.
There’s no reason to have overly
stiff springs on a Cayman; the
car is more rigid than any other
unibody they’ll ever touch. It’s
like a go-kart.

I wait every day for the guy
who wants to put a 997 Turbo
engine in a Cayman. I want
some monster torque project.
There were people who put GT3
engines in Caymans and ran
them at the Nürburgring a few
years ago. TPC Racing makes
turbos for the car ($7490), but
I haven’t heard of anything too
outlandish powerwise.

You could do a 4-liter stroker
kit with the factory 3.6 crank, but
we’re working on a piston-and-rod
kit for the crank that won’t
require an overbore. The factory
has their sauce figured out when
they finish the cylinders; we’ve
had much success trying not to
reinvent everything. There’s a
reason they design these cars in
these ways.

I don’t think anybody can go
wrong snatching up a Cayman
in the color combo they want for
$25,000. You can’t get a 7-year old
911 for that money.

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It’s kind of the Miata of the Porsche line in terms of reliability and how little you have to do to it.

This after $5000 in mods to keep a stock one from oil starving at the track? Stuff like this and the IMS are the biggest things keeping me from 98X-chassis cars. I told myself I'd have to get a Boxster S or Cayman S before I bought another S2000, but I'm thinking otherwise the more I look into it. Which sucks, because I REALLY like the Cayman!